My exams are written and the carols are playing in my office, which can mean only one thing—the end of the term is rapidly approaching and with it a welcome rest. I would like to extend warm holiday wishes to you all and congratulate you on a successful term.

I’ve now held the position of UWFA President for six months, and it seems timely to reflect on the successes and failures of my tenure thus far. I’m happy to report that more successes come to mind than failures. To end on a happy note, let me begin with the one failure that comes to mind. As many of you may recall, this summer I wrote a letter to Dr. Axworthy about the vacancy management plan and
asked that he speak to faculty. Despite a positive reply and subsequent reassurances in late September, no meeting is scheduled. I view this as unfortunate as I know many of you were eager to hear from him. I will continue to encourage him to address the Membership.

BUFA strike headquarters hosted a union Membership meeting on Monday afternoon; it was billed as a Q&A session, but we knew well that it would be a victory celebration. And celebrate we did, an hour and a half of speech-giving and ovation that included a brief synopsis of the contents of our new Collective Agreement, won through the staging of a 45-day strike. An outside observer who had knowledge of the contents of the CA might well wonder the reason for the cheery demeanour of the crowd. It is not as if the new CA would bestow riches upon the Membership, certainly. No, the celebration was about being part of a collective action that challenged established authority (the university administration, the local commercial media, and the provincial government) and emerged at the end of the struggle with BUFA very much intact. Very few Members defected across the picket lines.

Academic librarians from across Canada attended a very interesting two-day conference put on by CAUT
in late October. It was noted at the beginning that a high percentage of librarians feel that there are grievable issues in their workplaces, but only a small percentage of librarians actually launch grievances. To help librarians understand the issues surrounding grievances, participants engaged in plenary discussions and a variety of role-playing scenarios against the backdrop of a fictitious (but true-to-life) collective agreement.

The Aboriginal Post Secondary Education Working Group (APSE) forum began February 1-3, 2008, in Winnipeg, and was hosted by CAUT. The CAUT Equity Committee began work on the development of the APSE some years previous. Each forum has been hosted by CAUT and planned primarily by the APSE working group. The APSE forum empowers indigenous scholars and acknowledges the relevance of indigenous knowledge and practice in the context of APSE forums sponsored by CAUT.

Keep an eye out for more events put on by the Membership Committee in the coming term.

 

More photos after the jump…

Human Resources recently circulated a memo about changes to CPP that start in January, and earlier offered a related seminar. People between 60 and 65 collecting CPP and still workingwill be required to make CPP contributions. However, people 65 to 70 years of age, collecting CPP, and still working must decide whether to contribute to CPP or not.

Specifically, the university will start deducting CPP contributions from salaries of Members aged 65 to 70 in January 2012, even if they collect CPP, unless the administration receives a form instructing payroll to not deduct further CPP contributions. A decision to contribute should be based on such factors as the benefits of further contributions and their cost.

In an unstable global economy, universities appear to be increasingly under siege. From the corporatization of higher education to the violent clampdown on student protest, academic freedom is threatened on perhaps an unprecedented scale in modern times. Find out what other scholars are prognosticating about the future of academic work. Members are invited to select from the following list of recent publications on higher education to write a review of approximately 500 - 700 words. For their labour, they will be rewarded with the book they have chosen to review.

On April 20 the UWFA Executive invited me to join them in meeting with members of the administration including Dr. Axworthy.  A principal objective of the meeting was to consider the need for improved communication between different segments of the University of Winnipeg community. It is this last word, “community,” that is all important.  Community is, after all, central to what the University represents to the thousands of graduates who remember their time here with a deep and abiding affection.  It was community that we experienced as our students supported us so firmly and so generously during bargaining.  It is community that is central to the national ratings of undergraduate programs where we regularly excel.  It is community that is evident in the generous giving that occurred in the recently completed capital campaign.

Our community is, however, threatened in many ways by the historic underfunding of the University. Class size, which has grown to the point that faculty know fewer and fewer of our students, is but one example.  At the April 20 meeting, we discussed the historic underfunding and the possibility that we could speak of it with one voice – students, faculty, staff, and administration.  The looming provincial election seemed to provide a particularly opportune time to raise the issue and to underscore the political implications of the underfunding. Assurances were made that communication was a high priority and would be improved.